Avatar, Assembled is a curated volume that unpacks videogame and virtual world avatars--not as a monolithic phenomenon (as they are usually framed) but as sociotechnical assemblages, pieced together from social (human-like) features like voice and gesture to technical (machine-like) features like graphics and glitches. Each chapter accounts for the empirical, theoretical, technical, and popular understandings of these avatar "components"--60 in total--altogether offering a nuanced explication of avatars-as-assemblages as they matter in contemporary society and in individual experience. The volume is a "crossover" piece in that, while it delves into complex ideas, it is written in a way that will be accessible and interesting to students, researchers, designers, and practitioners alike.

Avatar, Assembled is a curated volume that unpacks videogame and virtual world avatars--not as a monolithic phenomenon (as they are usually framed) but as sociotechnical assemblages, pieced together from social (human-like) features like voice and gesture to technical (machine-like) features like graphics and glitches. Each chapter accounts for the empirical, theoretical, technical, and popular understandings of these avatar "components"--60 in total--altogether offering a nuanced explication of avatars-as-assemblages as they matter in contemporary society and in individual experience. The volume is a "crossover" piece in that, while it delves into complex ideas, it is written in a way that will be accessible and interesting to students, researchers, designers, and practitioners alike.

A new assembly language programming book from a well-loved master. Art of 64-bit Assembly Language capitalizes on the long-lived success of Hyde's seminal The Art of Assembly Language. Randall Hyde's The Art of Assembly Language has been the go-to book for learning assembly language for decades. Hyde's latest work, Art of 64-bit Assembly Language is the 64-bit version of this popular text. This book guides you through the maze of assembly language programming by showing how to write assembly code that mimics operations in High-Level Languages. This leverages your HLL knowledge to rapidly understand x86-64 assembly language. This new work uses the Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM), the most popular x86-64 assembler today. Hyde covers the standard integer set, as well as the x87 FPU, SIMD parallel instructions, SIMD scalar instructions (including high-performance floating-point instructions), and MASM's very powerful macro facilities. You'll learn in detail: how to implement high-level language data and control structures in assembly language; how to write parallel algorithms using the SIMD (single-instruction, multiple-data) instructions on the x86-64; and how to write stand alone assembly programs and assembly code to link with HLL code. You'll also learn how to optimize certain algorithms in assembly to produce faster code.

The Scale Model does one thing: makes it easy for business entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. Using a proven methodology that is easy to understand and implement, business teams can learn how to diagnose and solve barriers to growth. The Scale Model equips CEOs and senior leaders with a framework to assess where the pain points lie in their business, and easy-to-use templates to help them work out the solutions to enable continued growth. The Model has been used by high-growth companies around the world to achieve industry-beating growth in sales and profits, with engaged and aligned teams. In a complicated business environment, the straightforward advice and practical structure of the Scale Model provides for business planning. When you're busy running your business, you want just one place to go to fix it. This is that place. Pick up The Scale Model today, work through the tools inside, and watch your business grow. That's how easy it is.

The Enterprise is a fictional City-State formed by a few of the many members of the US Military, Engineers, and Scientists who participated in World War II (WWII), as well as the wars and 'Police Actions' that followed. At first, the Enterprise was merely a privately held company that designed electronic equipment, robot-warriors, and weapons which they sold to the US Armed Services. In order to help pay the bills, one of the Founders of the Company, who was extremely well versed in buying and selling Securities, used his talent for the Company's benefit. After a short time, the Enterprise bought an Island near the Bahama Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, and declared itself a Country, the Enterprise Isle. The Island was protected from attack by the use of the weapons it had developed. (These weapons may well be the weapons used by the US, its Allies, and its Enemies by 2035). After repeated attacks, these enemy countries, having lost planes and ships, as well as countless members of their armed forces decided not to annoy this new Country. Thus, the Enterprise grew in wealth and gained the respect of the Nations of the world. During the intervening years, it developed an Engineering and a Medical School that were the among the best in the world and employed equipment found nowhere else. By 2020, the Enterprise was one of the 5 wealthiest countries in the world. Its GDP was $10T in 2020, and its philosophy was to trade with any country that would trade fairly with them. Any company, or country, that dealt unfairly, suffered severe consequences. Indeed, it had already become known that the Enterprise had weapons that could destroy any country in the world with little damage to itself. The Enterprise's primary objectives were to provide for its 4 million Citizens, and to try not to interfere in other countries' business. This second item was not always easy to accomplish. After all, we all have friends!

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of »technical others« and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material.

Avatar and Nature Spirituality explores the cultural and religious significance of James Cameron’s film Avatar (2010), one of the most commercially successful motion pictures of all time. Its success was due in no small measure to the beauty of the Pandora landscape and the dramatic, heart-wrenching plight of its nature-venerating inhabitants. To some audience members, the film was inspirational, leading them to express affinity with the film’s message of ecological interdependence and animistic spirituality. Some were moved to support the efforts of indigenous peoples, who were metaphorically and sympathetically depicted in the film, to protect their cultures and environments. To others, the film was politically, ethically, or spiritually dangerous. Indeed, the global reception to the film was intense, contested, and often confusing. To illuminate the film and its reception, this book draws on an interdisciplinary team of scholars, experts in indigenous traditions, religious studies, anthropology, literature and film, and post-colonial studies. Readers will learn about the cultural and religious trends that gave rise to the film and the reasons these trends are feared, resisted, and criticized, enabling them to wrestle with their own views, not only about the film but about the controversy surrounding it. Like the film itself, Avatar and Nature Spirituality provides an opportunity for considering afresh the ongoing struggle to determine how we should live on our home planet, and what sorts of political, economic, and spiritual values and practices would best guide us.

This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis. This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.